


Two Times One Time

by a_classic_fool



Category: Do No Harm (TV)
Genre: Basically I Am Mean To Ruben So I Can Fix It Later, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fix-It of Sorts, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Let Ruben Be Happy, M/M, Multi, Panic Attacks, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Threesome - F/M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 18:29:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10882503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_classic_fool/pseuds/a_classic_fool
Summary: In which kissing Jason at a bar one night comes back to haunt Ruben, and Vanessa and Usnavi help with the ghosts.





	Two Times One Time

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I have no idea what this is. I have only watched the LMM supercut of Do No Harm, so I also have no idea if this is actually canon-compliant or not. Jason has a girlfriend in this fic, which I think he does in the show too. This is based on @thisstableground’s [less than ninety degrees](http://archiveofourown.org/series/713601) series, which is the crossover I never knew I needed.
> 
> Warnings are for off-screen sexual assault, on-screen flashback, and on-screen torture. Y’all, what the fuck have I become.

1.

After three shots and one and a half beers, Ruben was still not enjoying the party. The bar was dark and, despite the lack of smoke, somehow smoky; the sound of pool cues clanking against pool balls and the felt of the pool tables was going to his head and making it pound; and although he had found a relatively empty corner to stand in, he still felt conspicuous. He looked around at the swarm of moving, snarled bodies, some sheened with sweat and glowing in the dim light, and was reminded yet again that everyone in the world save himself had apparently known better than to wear a sweater and a button-down to a bar on a Friday night. 

Ruben leaned his head back to rest against the wall behind him and took a very long drink of the beer in his hand. He considered checking the time and instead stared at Jason, realizing as he did so that he was teetering dangerously on the edge of being properly drunk. He shook his head to clear it and found that he had succeeded only in making himself dizzy.

Jason had apparently noticed Ruben’s staring and was now extricating himself from the barstool where he had been sitting between a man and a woman Ruben had definitely seen making out earlier. Ruben noticed that the man’s hand trailed down Jason’s arm as Jason moved away from them and made his way over to Ruben.

“Ruben!” he said, with maybe too much enthusiasm, standing directly in front of Ruben and clapping him on the shoulder. Jason’s hand slid down until he was squeezing Ruben’s bicep in a way Ruben did not understand.

“Jason. Hi.” Ruben realized he had very little to say to Jason when they weren’t talking about whatever job it was that Jason needed Ruben to do, but Jason took care of the silence by taking a step closer to Ruben and putting his free hand on Ruben’s waist. Their faces were inches apart and Ruben’s breath hitched. Jason was taller than he was and he stared into Jason’s eyes with an expression that made his gut twist in embarrassment.

“Jason. Come on,” Ruben said, with little conviction. Jason seemed to take that as an invitation and shifted so he was bracing himself against the wall, one hand on either side of Ruben’s body. Jason’s legs were spread so that Ruben was almost standing between them and he felt pinned, trapped, unable to move.

He was clearly drunk — his breath was slightly sour with alcohol and his eyes were glinting in an unfamiliar, dangerous way — but Ruben was finding it hard to care. Jason was so _close_ to him. Ruben, unsure what to do with his own hands, let them dangle at his sides, clenching them around fistfulls of air.

“You can touch, Ruben,” Jason said. “It’s okay.” 

Before he could stop them, Ruben’s hands were on Jason’s chest, feeling their way down to land at Jason’s waist.

“Stop,” Ruben managed, in a humiliatingly breathy voice. “I don’t think — I mean, you’re gonna regret this, if we keep going. You’re drunk.” 

Jason didn’t stop his assault on Ruben’s cognitive functioning. He leaned closer until their chests were touching, until he was entirely within the circle of Ruben’s arms and Ruben’s hands had slid from his waist to his lower back. When he spoke again his mouth was almost touching Ruben’s. “You think?”

“Yes. Later. You’ll regret it later.” Ruben turned his head to the side in an attempt to remove temptation but succeeded only in orienting himself so that Jason’s teeth were dragging against his jaw.

“No,” said Jason, still against his jaw. “I definitely won’t regret it later.” 

Jason laid a hand against the side of Ruben’s face and turned Ruben’s head so they were making eye contact again. He leaned in and took Ruben’s lower lip in his teeth, sucking it into his mouth before releasing it and kissing Ruben properly. Ruben found himself palming Jason’s ass without realizing how it had happened.

Ruben wasn’t sure how much time had passed by the time Jason finally broke the kiss. Ruben felt rather than controlled the way that his mouth trailed after Jason’s even after their lips were no longer touching.

“ _God_ ,” Jason said, letting his forehead rest against Ruben’s. “You don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve gotten to do this.” Ruben felt himself getting hard in response and groaned, internally, with the small part of his brain that wasn’t aching to use his grip on Jason’s ass to pull Jason tighter against his crotch.

They stood, forehead to forehead, for not nearly long enough. Jason stepped backwards, away from Ruben and, with remarkable coordination for someone who had to be drunk, made his way back to the bar, sliding his arm around the waist of a blonde pediatric surgeon who had just knocked back a tequila shot. Ruben’s knees were weak and he let the wall continue to take his weight while he tried to get himself under control.

After his heart had slowed and his breath no longer sounded like panting, he realized Jason had gone, as had the pediatric surgeon. It was good, said the rational voice in Ruben’s head, that Ruben hadn’t gone with him. Ruben did not want to be a part of Jason’s drunken infidelity and, whatever fantasies he jacked off to before falling asleep, the thought of standing in a room with Jason, letting himself be touched and undressed, letting Jason see the frequently disastrous combination of desperation and inexperience that was basically Ruben’s entire sexual persona, was unbearable.

But as he grabbed his coat and wallet from the table where he’d begun the evening and went outside to wait for a cab in the cold, he was still obsessively unsure what had just happened and even more unsure what to do about it. What was the protocol for this? Was he supposed to go to work on Monday and pretend he hadn’t been half-hard against his coworker’s leg over the weekend? Perhaps worse, was he supposed to text Jason? _Hey, hope you’re not too hungover, can we talk?_ Or, _Hey, you may have noticed that I’m stupid into you, want to get dinner?_ Unfuckingthinkable.

By Monday morning, Ruben had spent approximately thirty-six hours thinking as hard as he could about not thinking about Friday night. He had already put in headphones, turned the music up as loud as it would go without hurting his ears, and written thirteen pages of notes on the compound he was developing before Jason burst into Ruben’s lab two hours late and clapped a hand on Ruben’s shoulder. Ruben jumped about three feet in the air and nearly stabbed himself in the eye with his microscope.

“I need to talk to you,” said Jason, as though that were somehow an appropriate greeting.

“ _Jesus_ ,” said Ruben. “Good morning to you too.”

Jason’s jaw clenched slightly and his nostrils flared, just for a moment, before he could control his annoyance. “Sorry. Of course. Good morning.”

“How was the pediatric surgeon?” asked Ruben, pointedly, trying and failing to keep both the jealousy and the judgement out of his voice.

Jason gave Ruben a look that said, in no uncertain terms, that Ruben was distracting him from whatever very important task Jason was planning on dumping in Ruben’s lap. “The what? The _who_?”

“The nurse. The one you went home with on Friday.” Ruben paused. “Wait. You _did_ go home with her, didn’t you?” _Don’t sound so fucking hopeful_ , he told himself. _It’s fucking pathetic._

Jason looked temporarily panicked and his hand clenched compulsively at the pocket of his lab coat. “Uh. Yes. I mean, no. I didn’t.”

“Oh,” said Ruben. “Was it because of — you know. Us.” _Idiot_ , he added in his head. _He’s not single anyway_.

“What about us? Ruben, what are you talking about?”

“The bar. Friday night. We. Uh. You know.”

Nothing Ruben was saying seemed to be making Jason less confused. “What bar?”

“Connie’s birthday? We all went out to Bow and Arrow?” Ruben had no idea what was going on anymore and he was feeling stupider by the minute. Was Jason embarrassed at having kissed Ruben? Did he regret telling Ruben he’d been wanting to? Ruben knew how alcohol affected Jason and he was prepared to put money on the fact that Jason hadn’t been so drunk as to have forgotten the entire evening. Ruben remembered Jason’s teeth dragging across his lip, Jason’s hands on his hips, and felt his cock twitch in his jeans. _Not now,_ he hissed at it, in his head. _This is a_ really _bad time._  

Jason’s face twitched in a way Ruben could not read. He seemed to have consciously arranged his mouth into a smile when he said, “ _Oh_. Yeah. The hangover, of course. Sorry, it’s just been a long day.”

“It’s ten in the morning,” Ruben pointed out, but Jason had already turned and left the lab, hand reaching into his pocket for his phone

Standing halfway up from his chair and adjusting his jeans, Ruben yelled after him, “Didn’t you need something?” But Jason had already disappeared down the hallway, apparently no longer in need of his pet chemist.    

The following week, they discovered Ian was immune to Blackout, and Ruben did not put the pieces together.

 

2.

Many years later, in a warehouse in Jamaica, Ruben learned how much pain a looped electrical cord can cause when brought down hard across the backs of the thighs, the skin over the kidneys, the soft flesh of the stomach. He learned that when the blade of a knife is especially sharp, the cuts it makes are, for an instant after they appear, almost painless, and then the burning begins. He learned the kind of hurt that your mind runs up against and is unable to comprehend or push through — learned also that comprehension has little to do with feeling. That you don’t have to understand what is happening to scream.

But most of all, Ruben learned about nausea.

Time lost meaning after the first day and he came to, at some indistinguishable point, with his wrists tied to the arms of a metal chair. He was already dizzy from the agony of sitting on the open welts that crosshatched the backs of his legs and he opened his eyes to find Ian in front of him, watchful, as though he had been waiting for Ruben to wake up.

“And he’s back,” Ian said. “I was worried there for a minute.”

He knelt on the floor between Ruben’s legs, rested his hands on Ruben’s knees and slid them upwards, along the mutilated skin of Ruben’s thighs and over the panicked rise and fall of his ribs. Eventually Ian’s fingers settled loose and relaxed around Ruben’s throat and Ruben had never felt more naked, although he was mercifully still wearing his boxers.

Ian stayed that way for what felt like several minutes, motionless except for his right thumb, which was tracing the line of Ruben’s jaw. Ruben tried to turn his head, to move out Ian’s reach, but Ian’s hands around his neck tightened with a sudden, determined cruelty and he froze, his entire world reduced to the rattling sound he made as he tried to draw breath. Ian’s grip relaxed.

“Open your eyes, Rubes,” said Ian, from somewhere very far away. Ruben hadn’t realized he had closed them.

“I can’t.” He wasn’t sure at first if he had actually spoken or only imagined it.

“That’s too bad,” said Ian, as though it didn’t much matter either way. He tightened his hands around Ruben’s throat so viciously that Ruben’s eyes snapped open, found Ian’s, stayed fixed on them.

“Good boy,” Ian said, in a voice so rough and quiet that it sounded how Jason had sounded, in Ruben’s dreams from the time before, when he had pressed his lips to Ruben’s neck and his hands to Ruben’s hips. Now, so far away from those dreams, Ruben’s stomach roiled and he was sure, deep in his gut, that this was it. He wasn’t getting out of this.

Keeping his eyes on Ruben’s, Ian leaned forward and sucked Ruben’s bottom lip into his mouth, holding it between his teeth. The blue of his eyes seemed to brighten and spark like a match glinting to life in the night.

“ _God_ ,” Ian whispered, in a sing-song mockery of need, “ _you don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve gotten to do this_.”

Ruben wondered if he was suddenly on the other side of a very thick door and simply observing what was happening to him through a peephole. The creaking and shifting of the warehouse grew muffled. His own breathing seemed to fade away. 

“No,” Ruben croaked, his voice thick and ill-fitted to his throat. But he knew that what he really meant was, _Oh. Of course._

“Yep,” said Ian. “You didn’t think _Jason_ wanted you like that, did you? He just wanted your brain. He never would’ve touched you like this.” A long pause. “But I will. Give you what you wanted. I’m nice like that.”

Had there been anything left in his stomach, Ruben thought he might have been sick. Instead he retched, once, twice, three times, doubling over and then whimpering when the welts on his stomach brushed the cuts on his thighs. His head swam and the world swam and breath seemed hard to come by, as though the air in the room had gotten thinner, slipped through the crack beneath the warehouse door and left him gasping and alone.

Ian’s hands had made their way back down Ruben’s body without Ruben noticing. They were resting on Ruben’s hips and plucking, almost playfully, at the waistband of his boxers.

“What d’you say, Rubes? I don’t mind if you need to pretend I’m him.”

And this time the nausea won. Ruben didn’t turn his head fast enough to avoid getting stomach bile on his chest and he couldn’t stop himself screaming when it seeped into the wounds Ian had left there.

 

3.

Ruben had been dating Vanessa and Usnavi for a month and he’d told them as little as he could about what had happened — just the basics, just that there had been a warehouse and a knife and an electrical cord and a lot of pain. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to tell them more, even though the memories were heavy, carrying them on his own, and he ached all over from the weight of them.

When he imagined telling Usnavi and Vanessa — _he raped me, it was my fault, he only did it because he knew I wanted Jason, he wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been so pathetic in the first place_ — he couldn’t stop himself imagining also the way the door would click closed on their way out, the way the empty rooms of the apartment would echo with their absence, the way the broken pieces of himself would rattle around in the places they had been. _We don’t want someone ruined_ , said the Usnavi in his head. _This is a happy place, and you’re ruining it_. Part of Ruben’s brain knew Usnavi would never say that, but it wasn’t always a very loud part, once the panic started.

One Saturday evening, Vanessa was sitting propped against the headboard of Ruben’s bed, knees bent and legs spread so Ruben could lie between them, and Ruben was leaning back against her body with his head on her stomach. It was oddly tender. Usnavi was straddling Ruben’s hips, one hand on Vanessa’s thigh and the other snarled in Ruben’s hair, and his mouth was busy short-circuiting Ruben’s brain.

Usnavi didn’t kiss with Vanessa’s finesse, but Ruben had never been kissed by anyone who meant it more than Usnavi did. Usnavi kissed like he was offering his entire self, as though he thought that if he was gentle enough, or fierce enough, or enthusiastic enough, he could find all the cracks in your heart and erase them, fix them, wipe them away. Ruben thought that more than made up for the occasional overuse of tongue.

“ _God_ ,” said Usnavi, breaking the kiss, eyes unfocused and pupils blown. “You don’t know how long it’s been since I _felt_ like this.” He was panting into Ruben’s mouth and he moved back in to pull Ruben’s lower lip between his teeth and suck on it.

It wasn’t as though nothing had triggered Ruben before. Last week he’d let Vanessa put a piece of gum in his mouth without thinking and suddenly the gum was a pill and the bodega was a club and nowhere was safe. The week before that, Usnavi, reaching across Ruben in bed for his laptop, had accidentally smacked Ruben in the arm with the charging cable and Ruben had slid out of his body and into some other place. But Ruben hadn’t been undressed then. The scars on his legs and his chest hadn’t been so visible, touchable, present. His whole body went cold and clammy and his stomach dropped like going over the crest of a roller coaster with no guarantee of staying on the tracks. He was light-headed, he had to lie down, he _was_ lying down.

“Ruben. _Ruben._ ” Usnavi’s voice, high and panicked in spite of himself.

“I’m here,” Ruben tried to say, but it must have come out wrong, because he felt Vanessa sit all the way up, shifting her legs underneath her. He was distantly aware that she said something to Usnavi, that her hand was resting on his shoulder. He rolled onto his side and curled in on himself. _Don’t fall apart._ He thought about knives. He thought about the way that there was nothing to gather the pieces of himself in, nowhere to keep them until he understood them again.

 “Come back,” he heard Usnavi say. “Come back. You’re here, in the apartment. You’re safe.”

Vanessa’s weight left the bed entirely and then Ruben was suddenly covered with a thin, soft blanket. He grabbed the edge of it and tugged it until it was safely tucked under his chin, hiding everything, hiding all his skin. He stayed that way, thought about the feeling of the fabric on his shoulders, told himself no one could find him here. Time passed, he thought. He wouldn’t swear to it.  

“I’m here,” he said again, and this time it must have worked. He felt rather than heard Usnavi’s exhale, heavy like he’d been holding his breath.

“What do you need?” Vanessa asked, but Ruben didn’t know. He shook his head. Her weight shifted again and he cracked an eye open to see her sitting cross-legged in front of him, hand resting upturned on the bed. He released his death grip on the blanket and reached his fingers out from under it, letting them tangle with hers.

Usnavi was behind him, the curve of his body mimicking the curve of Ruben’s. When he spoke, Ruben thought he must have his head propped up on his elbow, because his voice sounded as though it were coming from somewhere higher up. 

“Can I touch you? Is that okay?”

“Just my hands,” said Ruben. He wasn’t sure how loud his voice actually was. He uncurled slightly, let the blanket slide off his shoulders so that his arms were free.

Usnavi moved around to sit next to Vanessa and he slid his hand around Ruben’s. He ran his thumb over Ruben’s palm, smoothing out the tension with the rhythm of someone kneading bread. Ruben noticed, in odd brief flashes, the lines between Usnavi’s eyebrows, the tension around his mouth.

“It’s okay,” he said, although he wasn’t sure that it was. He thought he saw the tension ease a little. 

“Ruben,” said Vanessa, eventually. “I’m not — I don’t know if I — did he….?”

Ruben thought he knew what she meant. He nodded. Vanessa looked away, at the wall over her shoulder, and Usnavi’s hand squeezed involuntarily around Ruben’s.

“I’m sorry,” said Ruben.

Vanessa’s head snapped back. “No,” she said, voice louder and much fiercer than it had been a moment ago. “You don’t need to do that. Not ever.”

“You looked away,” said Ruben. “I thought maybe — you were ashamed. Or tired of me.” 

Usnavi took the hand he was still holding and brought it to his mouth, pressing kisses to Ruben’s knuckles. Vanessa shut her eyes briefly and then looked at Ruben. “ _No_ ,” she said again.

“But I’m not _whole_. I don’t understand why you want this.”

“We wouldn’t kiss you like that if we didn’t,” Vanessa said.

“No, I mean — why do you want this?” This time Ruben was looking directly at Usnavi, remembering what Usnavi had said to set Ruben off.

“He’s liked you since he met you,” Vanessa said, on Usnavi’s behalf, since Usnavi was turning red and looking anywhere but at the two of them. Her eyes were shining, although Ruben wasn’t sure why.  

“Really?”

Usnavi took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said finally. “I didn’t know what it was, at first. I thought maybe — just, like, really strong friendship. But I just thought about you. A lot. And I wanted to make you smile, and to hold you, and to get rid of everything that was hurting you, and then when I saw you every morning my whole heart would hurt and I’d want to kiss you so bad, and _please_ say something so I can stop talking — ”

Vanessa kissed the corner of Usnavi’s mouth and he quieted. Ruben sat up, his mouth slightly open, and he wanted to reach out and touch Usnavi, touch Vanessa, make sure this was _real_ , but he didn’t know how it could possibly be real and he didn’t move.

Vanessa bit her lip. Not meeting Ruben’s eyes, as though she was feeling too much already, she took one of his wrists in each of her hands and guided him until his right hand was resting over Usnavi’s heart, his left over her own. Ruben straightened his fingers so his palms were flat against their chests and let his eyes close and his head fall forward. Usnavi’s heartbeat was rapid, quick, easy to feel; Vanessa’s was less insistent, harder to make out, but no less frantic.

“I can’t make you believe me, Ruben,” she said. “I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s okay,” he said, finally. His hair, which had gotten shaggy since Jamaica, was falling in his eyes but he couldn’t bring himself to move his hands and push it behind his ears. Instead, Usnavi did it for him, the rough pads of his fingers lingering against Ruben’s cheek. “I believe you.”


End file.
